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“The blaze, the splendor and the symmetry,
I cannot see — but darkness, death and darkness.”
– John Keats, Hyperion: A Fragment
According to the UK legal charity Reprieve, “the first large array of photographs depicting the devastating impact of US unmanned aircraft (‘drone’) attacks on innocent civilians in Pakistan” go on display today at at Beaconsfield Art Gallery, 22 Newport Street, London. The show, which displays the work of Noor Behram, a 39 year old photographer from the North Waziristan Agency (NWA), runs until August 5. Reportedly, photos from 28 of 60 drone attack sites visited by Behram can be viewed at the London gallery.
Last month, the U.S. prevented a Pakistani attorney, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, who is suing U.S. authorities for the drone strikes in his country, from traveling to the United States to address a human rights conference at Columbia University law school. “If seeking justice through the law – instead of violence – is the reason for banning my travel,” Akabar said, “then mine is another story of how government measures in the name of ‘national security’ have gone too far.” Akabar has a record of cooperation with the FBI in terrorist cases, and previously consulted with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Yesterday, according to The Scotsman, “lawyers acting for relatives of those killed close to the border with Afghanistan lodged a formal case [in Islamabad, Pakistan] against John Rizzo, the former acting general counsel for the American intelligence agency [CIA], accusing him of murder for his role in sanctioning targets.” The lawyers include Akbar and attorneys for Reprieve. [See Update at end of article for comment by Center for Constitutional Rights.]
Rizzo famously told Newsweek reporter Tara Mckelvey earlier this year that until his retirement in 2008, he had been the CIA official in charge of authorizing the so-called legal assassinations, or “neutralizations” in CIA-speak, of purported terrorists by remote-control drones.
At times, Rizzo sounded cavalier. “It’s basically a hit list,” he said. Then he pointed a finger at my forehead and pretended to pull a trigger. “The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.”
Rizzo was also the CIA attorney who sought approvals for CIA torture for former President George W. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation program” of torture.
Last month, according to a report by Ken Dilanian at the Los Angeles Times, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser (and former CIA official) John Brennan told a group of academics at Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington in regards to the drone strikes, “”there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.”
But a July 18 article by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism says U.S. claims are “untrue”:
According to Brennan, Barack Obama himself has ‘insisted’ that US drone strikes are ‘exceptionally surgical and precise’ and ‘do not put… innocent men, women and children in danger’.
Yet a detailed examination by the Bureau of 116 CIA ‘secret’ drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2010 has uncovered at least 10 individual attacks in which 45 or more civilians appear to have died.
According to Reprieve’s Project Bugsplat, which has been gathering evidence on the human cost of the U.S. drone strikes, “It has emerged that up to 2,283 people have been killed by US unmanned aircraft, or ‘drones’ in Pakistan since 2004 — with the numbers rapidly escalating in the past two years under President Obama. As many as 730 victims have been wholly innocent, according to one official source.”
“Bugsplat” is said to be the term U.S. officials use for the people killed in the drone strikes. But according to journalist Allan Nairn, this highly offensive term originated in the civilian kill ratios calculated by the Pentagon in Iraq. He told Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! in January 2010:
But even when they’re not targeting civilians, which is probably most of the time, they end up killing massive numbers of civilians. The Pentagon has a word for that, too. They call it “bugsplat.” In the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, they ran computer programs, and they called the program the Bugsplat program, estimating how many civilians they would kill with a given bombing raid. On the opening day, the printouts presented to General Tommy Franks indicated that twenty-two of the projected bombing attacks on Iraq would produce what they defined as heavy bugsplat — that is, more than thirty civilian deaths per raid. Franks said, “Go ahead. We’re doing all twenty-two.” So that adds up to, you know, about 660 anticipated, essentially planned, what in domestic terms would be called criminally negligent homicide, at the least, probably second-degree murder. You might even be able to get it up to first, first-degree. And that, just if — if that was the actual toll, the bugsplat estimate of the toll on the first day, that right there would give you a third of the World Trade Center death toll, just on the first day of the Iraq operation. And, of course, the Iraq operation has gone on. And that’s essentially what’s happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Extradite Former CIA Counsel John Rizzo to Pakistan
In an excellent article yesterday, Chris Hedges discussed the conviction last week by an Argentine court of retired Gen. Hector Gamen and former Col. Hugo Pascarelli for the torture of 2,500 people during Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the mid-1970s. The state terror by the Argentine government resulted in the disappearances, torture and murder of tens of thousands, and was an integral part of the U.S.-backed, Chilean-organized Operation Condor in the region. Hedges additionally noted that a military doctor, Maj. Norberto Atilio Bianco, was extradited last week from Paraguay to Argentina for baby trafficking.
The U.S. has refused to declassify documents related to the Argentine Dirty War. The House of Representatives defeated a proposed amendment by Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey (NY) on the declassification of U.S. intelligence files regarding the 1976 Argentine generals coup and the bloody seven year dictatorship that followed.
Hedges compared the actions of Rizzo in approving targeted assassinations by drone, and the criminal negligence of targeting civilians. “Rizzo, in moral terms, is no different from the deported Argentine doctor Bianco,” Hedges wrote, “and this is why lawyers in Britain and Pakistan are calling for his extradition to Pakistan to face charges of murder. Let us hope they succeed.” Drone attacks have quadrupled under Obama from the days of the Bush administration.
The United States has had a policy of torture and assassination for many decades. It began during the Second World War, with the justification that it was necessary in the war against Hitlerite fascism and aggressive Japanese imperialism. Then it was justified as necessary to defeat the Soviet Union during the “Cold War.” For a brief historical period, assassinations and torture were outlawed by U.S. law and treaty, although the U.S. still used proxies to do their dirty work. But no one was ever held accountable legally for the decades of earlier assassination and torture. (Click here to read the CIA’s assassination manual, now declassified.)
The Obama administration has announced it has no intention to investigate or prosecute any U.S. official for torture, despite overwhelming evidence of guilt for such war crimes among former administration officials (including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and a host of government attorneys and military officials). Following in the steps of other human rights activists, Human Rights Watch recently produced a report documenting the torture crimes and calling for investigations and prosecutions of government officials, by U.S. courts, and lacking that, by international courts, under the principle of “universal jurisdiction” for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This was the same legal principle used to indict Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.
The Obama administration is itself involved in war crimes, most notably by the increase in drone assassinations and the killing of civilians (including targeting of U.S. citizens), although it apparently has also continued the operation of CIA black sites (as evidenced by this report by Jeremy Scahill), the holding of ghost prisoners on Navy ships, backing the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, using isolation and sleep deprivation and fear-based techniques (and possibly drugs) as part of the official Army Field Manual on interrogation, all amid claims of ongoing torture and abuse at one or more prisons at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.
As Chris Hedges concluded in his Truthdig article the other day:
The only way the rule of law will be restored, if it is restored, is piece by piece, extradition by extradition, trial by trial. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft will, if we return to the rule of law, face trial. The lawyers who made legal what under international and domestic law is illegal, including not only Rizzo but Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William J. Haynes and John Yoo, will, if we are to dig our way out of this morass, be disbarred and prosecuted. Our senior military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw death squads in Iraq and widespread torture in clandestine prisons, will be lined up in a courtroom, as were the generals in Argentina, and made to answer for these crimes. This is the only route back.
Update, 2:50pm PDT: Center for Constitutional Rights has put out a press release on the filing of a “First Information Report” (FIR) in Islamabad, seeking an arrest warrant for John Rizzo. They make a good point about the psychological collateral damage on those who aren’t killed, but who live in proximity to such terror. Note, “last year, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit challenging the authorization for the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen in Yemen in Al-Aulaqi v. Obama, which was dismissed by the district court in Washington, DC, on jurisdictional grounds.”
In addition to the deaths and destruction caused by the strikes, the communities in the region, where more than half the population lives below the poverty line – more than three times the national average – have endured psychological trauma by living under the constant threat of bombardment. The combination of poverty and political instability has further isolated the historically distinct region from the rest of Pakistan, contributing to the lack of political will by the country’s leadership to confront the CIA’s drone program, and allowing the killings to continue largely unchallenged. The high civilian death toll has also been fuel for anti-American sentiment throughout Pakistan.
13 Comments
I wanted to put in something about the new “hummingbird drones” about to go operational, whose research was bankrolled by DARPA, but I couldn’t quite find the room, without having the article wander off.
However, that’s what comments are for. So check out this article by Jason Paur at Wired, complete with amazing video.
Or check out the video alone:
http://bcove.me/lbb1iryh
Off topic, on the subject of the death of Sean Hoare, a material witness in the Murdoch hacking scandal, and who recently told the New York Times that reporters were gaining access to exclusive police technology to track cell phone users, for a price, I was struck by this little tidbit in the CIA assassination article linked in the article: “If the subject drinks heavily, morphine or a similar narcotic can be injected at the passing out stage, and the cause of death will often be held to be acute alcoholism.” Nice of them to think of that! (Hoare was notorious for his drug/alcohol problems, as this article in The Star noted.)
While there is no evidence that Hoare was killed, his death at this time is, despite police protestations to the opposite, quite suspicious. Given the role of the police in the phone hacking scandal, who can trust their investigation?
Thank you, Jeff.
“Bugsplat”, as a term, certainly reflects well upon the humanity of those using the term and engaging in the “pastime”.
Such a regard for life cannot go un-noticed …
Even the “good” Americans shall, someday, be brought to account for allowing murder to be done in their name.
Before we can lay waste the lives of others and, then, brag about it, we MUST, first, lay waste our own sanity AND humanity.
Drone on America, to thine own peril.
DW
The omniscience of the police, Jeff, they just KNOW there is nothing even remotely suspicious regarding Hoare’s death, before doing an investigation.
In America, we go the Brits two “better”, the government says that it is always omnipotent, and omnipresent, as well as omniscient … and here, in the Good Ole, the courts always agree … unlike in Jolly Olde, where the whole point of the law does not appear to be to use the law to undermine the law AND civil society.
Come to think of it … isn’t the US gummint trying to make a deal with the too big to flail, mortgage “interests” BEFORE an investigation is undertaken?
Must, somehow be catching.
Wonder why?
Hmmm.
DW
“Bugsplat” is, in my opinion, a Nazi term. It equates human beings with bugs, and the concatenation of the two words is somewhat Germanic, as well.
Looks like Glenn covered much of the same material today, and has a podcast as well with Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, whose new report I discussed in the article.
Marc Garlasco, who once worked on targeting at the Pentagon, explained the calculus of civilian deaths in high value targeting to the television news program 60 Minutes this way, “Our number was 30. So, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you’re gonna kill up to 29 people in a strike against Saddam Hussein, that’s not a problem. But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either President Bush, or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.”
Hey, hey, LBJ: How many kids did you kill today? Nothing changes much in this country. . . except back in my parents’ day Democrats were clear-minded enough to recognize–and remonstrate against–a Democrat that was killing brown people.
still censoring me, i care to note.
all the same, i shall continue to say it: you elected a spook. his mother was a covert employee of the cia. her mission was to identify opponents of the indonesian military regime that was enthroned by the usa so as to protect us oil & gas interests.
in 1965, anne dunham soetero was responsible for the targeting of 500,000 – 2,000,000 indonesian opponents of the us-supported junta.
her husband[sic] was one of the junta’s butchers.
that is the true origin of barry soetero[aka obombya].
the left ignores this history for reasons that i continue to consider unfathomable. it is as if no one wants to know that they were responsible for electing a homicidal gangster.
Thank you for collating all this information, Jeff. I know from experience it takes a certain toll on one’s soul. Please remember to refresh and renew yourself; our killing of brown people seems as though it will not end anytime soon. Thus, your mission will also stretch long into the future.
The video demonstrates a level of ironic “humor” which is too subtle for 95 percent of Americans. Ethical considerations are a joke in today’s USA. “Bugsplat” more accurately reflects the level of sophistication of most people in this country.
It is of course correct to highlight and dispute the killing of civilians. But at the same time we should recognize that the killing, rape, torture, injury, imprisonment and displacement of civilians is a common ingredient of war. In fact military professionals would consider that not killing civilians in war is almost whimsical.
Foreign civilians have been killed in large numbers in all wars that the U.S. has fought in, and most particularly in Germany, Japan and Korea. In Asia, where many people live in wooden dwellings, the methodical bombing sequence was: 1) Concussion bombs to blow everything apart, 2) incendiary bombs to set the destruction on fire, and 3) fragmentation bombs to kill the people scurrying around to put out the fires.
In Afghanistan, now widened by Obama to AfPak, the killing of civilians has been a prominent feature of U.S. military activities from the beginning.
one study:
A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States’ Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan:
A Comprehensive Accounting [revised]
“What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties — 3,000 – 3,400 [October 7, 2001 thru March 2002] civilian deaths — in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan.”
Professor Marc W. Herold
Ph.D., M.B.A., B.Sc.
http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm
also:
March 2002
When U.S. warplanes strafed [with AC-130 gunships] the farming village of Chowkar-Karez, 25 miles north of Kandahar on October 22-23rd, 2001, killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official said, “the people there are dead because we wanted them dead.” The reason? They sympathized with the Taliban. When asked about the Chowkar incident, Rumsfeld replied, “I cannot deal with that particular village.”
also:
A U.S. officer aboard the US aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, described the use of 2,000 lb cluster bombs dropped by B-52 bombers: “A 2,000 lb. bomb, no matter where you drop it, is a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile.”
And so on. War is hell. It is never necessary, and it is never, ever without the killing of innocent people, including large numbers of women and children.
So the answer is to eliminate war, not to try to sanitize it, which can’t be done.
“Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century” – Amy Goodman 2/6/09 interview of P.W. Singer, author of book on drone warfare:
I never forget that. Insects.